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Tuesday, December 6, 2011

I'm 25 years old, and I'm in first year again - in a different
field of study, but at the same campus as my last degree. This is my 7th
year in a university. Reading this post by Aimée made me
want to reflect on my years since leaving home for the Ivory towers, and my
development as both a student and as a person.

My "real" first year was in 2004,
where I was a bewildered West Coast transplant on a university campus in a
smallish town in Ontario. That year was too new and too
over-stimulating to reflect upon. I remember learning how to make mac and
cheese for the first time in a residence kitchen, going on my first awkward
date with an engineer, and going to a Finnegan’s Wake reading group and not
understanding a thing.

I was in first year again in 2008, starting my
Master's degree in a new city and a new campus. That time, I was no
longer a naive teenager not knowing how to do basic adult things. But I felt
overwhelmed in a different sense - from knowing my professors intimately to
having trouble connecting to a new group, from the comfort of a small anglophone
town to the foreign "city" where most people spoke in a
language and accent I couldn't fathom.

This time? I feel so much better - albeit still
a bit unsettled as first years tend to be. The law program at McGill
presents factors that appear contradictory and a little disorienting as a
result. I'm now pursuing a degree that is kind of like a post-graduate degree
(many people already hold Bachelor's, Master's, and some even PhDs) but not (in
its designation as a "bachelor's" and the presence of post-CEGEP
students pursuing their first university degree). It's two degrees at once,
purporting to be "transsystemic" that is meant to teach you about two
legal systems in one program. It's a bilingual degree where "bilingualism"
really means "passive" bilingualism where you don't have to express
yourself in the other language.

Being a first year again meant pushing myself to limits and places
I hadn't been to before. Pushing myself to work the hardest I've ever done in
many, many years - yes, even harder than that Master's. Pushing myself to write
multiple drafts when I only wanted to stop at the first one. Pushing myself to
read one more article on a topic I didn't understand when I wanted to stop.
Pushing myself to do the French reading when I wanted to copy-pasted it into
Google Translate or look at past summaries. Pushing myself to talk to strangers
at minglers, and pushing through the first few seconds of awkwardness.

It's also been about allowing myself to feel imperfect and
uncomfortable. Allowing myself to feel lost in concepts and feel overwhelmed
by so many Latin phrases. Allowing myself to make mistakes in
my writing, subsequently see the weakness in my writing - yes, writing! for
this English major! - and address them as best as I can. Allowing myself to
admit that I don't know, that I am no longer in control. Allowing myself
to accept the results that were not always the best. Allowing myself to close
my book and watch an episode of Boardwalk Empire or go to the
gym even though I had not finished my readings. And allowing myself to
still see my friends without too much guilt - there is never no guilt
- because it is important to be a good person that makes me
feel whole, rather than focusing too much on being a good student.

Sometimes it's a little bit of both - allowing myself to feel
disappointed, frustrated, but also pushing myself through those feelings to a
better place.

Last month, I finished my first pieces of first-year legal writing
assignments, and felt the anxiety of doing something I had never done
before. It's always an interesting experience - telling your brain to
think and organize in a different way, to orient your thoughts in a way that
you had never thought possible.

I'm studying for my first set of law school exams - and my first
exams in 3 years. I am making coherent study notes of everything I've read
instead of banging out a 20-page paper and reading a ton of Judith Butler. I go
through the daily grind of stressing over the information I have not yet
mastered, and procrastinating over Facebook and Globe and Mail browsing for
something - anything! - more interesting than my own notes. But then I feel the
moments of joy when I finally "get" something, when I can check off a
month's worth of notes off as having been reviewed.

2 comments:

This post is resonating with me today. I too am a first year law student, trying to desperately to prepare for my first law exams and struggling to write my first memorandum. I appreciate having someone else remind me that it’s okay I’m confused, frustrated and uncomfortable. I do need to allow myself to accept that this is new and I’m not supposed to know how to do everything immediately, without feeling it’s a personal failure. Thanks for the post, and the reminder!

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About the blog

Hook & Eye is an intervention and an invitation: we write about the realities of being women working in the Canadian university system. We muse about everything from gender inequities and how tenure works, to finding unfrumpy winter boots, decent childcare, and managing life’s minutiae. Ambitious? Obviously. We’re women in the academy.

About us

We are:

Co-founder and Editrix Emerita: Heather Zwicker (Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies & Vice Dean of Arts at the University of Alberta.)

Co-founder and Editrix: Aimée Morrison (Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. @digiwonk)

Co-founder and Editrix: Erin Wunker (Chair of the Board of Canadian Women in the Literary Arts www.cwila.com, contract academic faculty at Dalhousie University. @erinwunker)

Melissa Dalgleish (Research Officer in the Faculty of Graduate Studies and PhD Candidate at York University. @meldalgleish)

Boyda Johnstone (PhD Candidate in the Department of English at Fordham University in New York, NY. Her dissertation examines dream culture in the late Middle Ages. @BoydaJosa)

Jana Smith Elford (PhD Candidate in the Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta. She writes about 19th century feminism, social movements, and network visualization tools. @janasmithelford)